Case studies

Rob “Goondicum is situated right at the head of the Western Branch of the Burnett river in a big volcano crater. The Campbell family’s been here for five generations, and we run timber and cattle, and everything’s living quite comfortably together.”

Nadia “So our operation here at Goondicum is largely focused on co-existence grazing, seeing us run Brangus cattle in conjunction with looking after our environment and the wildlife.”

Nadia “The LRF and carbon farming presented an opportunity for us to build on what we’re doing here and create new regeneration projects.”

“We’re a member of our peak natural resources group, the Burnett Mary Regional Group, and they introduced us to the concept of carbon farming some years ago and that’s how we met GreenCollar, and in that time we’ve been working closely with GreenCollar to bring this project together.”

Jane – “GreenCollar can help landholders looking to do a project by assessing their property to see if they’re eligible for a project, by registering their project with the clean energy regulator, and then monitoring their project to make sure it’s on track”.

Nadia – “So the beauty of our carbon project working with the LRF is that they’re not two mutually exclusive things with our production of beef. They co-exist and we’re actually seeing and we’re actually seeing an improved environment for our beef because of the project.”

Linda – “The Land Restoration Fund values projects like the one here at Goondicum because over and above storing carbon, it delivers multiple benefits. It delivers benefits for the farm, the land, for regional communities like employment and training, and also benefits for the broader Queensland community, things like creating threatened species habitat and improving the quality of water that flows into the Great Barrier Reef.”

Nadia – “Not only is it great to know that you’re increasing the habitat for these threatened species, but it’s also great to be able to look out your front door and see the environment improving and that’s certainly great from a mental health perspective when we’re seeing drought occur more and more often”.

Rob – “The best part about carbon is it gives you a backup on-farm income. It’s a bit like a check coming in every year so you can develop more land sensibly, you can educate your children at school, you can set up better water infrastructure like we are at the moment.

Nadia – “A better quality environment means less overheads for us in terms of land management, and so by improving the canopy coverage and increasing the tree growth and regenerating large areas of forest, we’re seeing those rewards.”

Nadia – “I’d encourage any other landowners and especially graziers to look into the LRF and what’s available, and enhancing the biodiversity on their own properties and the benefits they can bring from that.”

Dan – “In 2004 my parents bought Stonehaven and first three years we were continuously grazing, and we started noticing a lot of country that was getting over-grazed so we set it up as a more regenerative style of grazing and we really had family support to change that grazing management and we noticed our country responding better to that.”

Dan – “We’re diversifying our business with carbon farming in a dry time which allows us to knock our stocking rate down, and if our country is not handling it, if it’s dry if our rainfall is down, we can lighten off our beef cattle and still have income coming from our land.”

Emma-Jane – “Having that set income as well allows us to forward plan on our budget.”

Emma-Jane – “Our project is an avoided clearing project where we cleared it seven or eight years previously and then we cleared another seven or eight years and now we’re avoiding that third cycle.”

Emma-Jane – “Trees are a part of any ecosystem and it’s that balance, so it’s not a case of no trees and it’s not a case of all trees, but to balance them effectively together to maximise the production and the ground cover.”

Dan – “I’m a fifth generation farmer and we’ve made the change here this generation.

Emma-Jane – “We have the evidence, we can show that these paddocks which have tree are actually giving us more yield as we continue.”

Joanna – “Carbon farming provides multiple benefits to landholders including a stable long-term income, improved land health and increased biodiversity, and most importantly these benefits don’t come at the expense of the existing operation. Carbon projects are integrated with the existing operation and so under most carbon project management you don’t need to de-stock.”

Emma-Jane – “Having effective ground-cover is going to improve your soil health which then leads to more yield and carrying capacity on your country.”

Emma-Jane – “Being sustainable and profitable, to us those are the same, they go hand in hand and we don’t see them as being separate.”

Emma-Jane – “The Land Restoration Fund is rewarding more than just sequestering carbon, because holistically a cattle property or a business is more than just one aspect and if we can be rewarded for improving our biodiversity and creating those habitats, healthy ecosystems, then we’re benefiting long-term.”

The Land Restoration Fund is investing in a collaborative project with Seqwater to restore native vegetation around Wivenhoe Dam. The project is being delivered by a contractor, CO2 Australia, and will involve planting more than 150 000 trees over seven sites covering more than 170 hectares around the dam’s edge.

The environmental plantings delivered through the Wivenhoe project will buffer and extend core koala habitat areas around Wivenhoe Dam, supporting the state’s interest in the conservation of that iconic species.

Working with the Land Restoration Fund, we are restoring an ex-paddock, ex-grazing land to the forest and the regional ecosystem that it once was.

The project will provide continual habitat for koalas, so historically there’s been grazed patches, or cleared patches, within the Wivenhoe Dam catchment. By restoring these areas, and intensively managing the pests, it will really help connect and support the population of koalas in the region.

We are out here with a team of 10 people, we’re planting 20,000 trees a day. Its really nice when we get to do a project like this with such significance both for Seqwater and animal habitat.

The carbon credits from the project will help defray the costs. The Land Restoration Fund in return for its investment, will receive an estimated 39,000 Australian Carbon Credit Units from the project in its first 18 years; that’s worth about half a million dollars in today’s currency, and represents a new cost-effective model for the delivery of new habitat for threatened species; and for Seqwater represents a new cost-effective model for catchment improvement to support their water quality objectives.

The Wivenhoe project is an innovative new model for delivering priority co-benefits for Queensland.

For more information visit the Land Restoration Fund website.